I had HELLP 18 months ago and just had my gall bladder taken out yesterday. I can attest that the pain in both instances is exactly the same and excruciating! I can now understand why they thought I had gall bladder trouble 18 months ago when I had HELLP (tests on the gall bladder at that time revealed nothing).

A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, every night for a week, with right upper quadrant back pain and epigastric pain. My first thought was, oh no, how could this be HELLP again, I'm not even pregnant! At first they thought I had a nasty ulcer(s), but after those drugs didn't work, they did further tests. That showed I had multiple gall stones, and the blockage they were causing to the bile duct resulted in this horrific pain.

I hear that both gall bladder attacks and HELLP pain is worse than labor. I hope I can vouch for that someday! A full term labor birth someday would be blissfully sureal...

I'm so glad I got this out of the way now before we became pregnant again. Whew!

I have never had heartburn, URQ pain or anything but when HELLP hit, that was unbelievable pain! Even after delivery my LE kept roller coastering so after much persistance my GI doc took my GB out and so far, 8 months out and occasional URQ pain my enzymes are normal. The pain is a few times, short and about every other month. My GI doc thinks it is my liver trying to become normal again. Fingers crossed.

evancaleb10 - oh, thank you... miracles do happen. He was sooo tiny. They told me he was that small, but I never mentally pictured what I first saw. I passed out trying to process the first sight of him in the NICU. Ever look at something that you think just doesn't make sense? That it shouldn't exist? It kind of felt like that... how could a human being live and be that tiny. He scored 8/9 APGARS! He did sooo well, it was unbelievable every day, kind of comical actually because it was so evident that he was a fighter. He tried to stand on his head in the incubator at 2 weeks old. He rolled out of his "bed" in the incubator at a month. He extubated himself twice and breathed great afterward on room air both times (telling us he didn't need that). And it got to where we couldn't keep an NG tube in him... that got yanked out too many times to count. At almost 2, he's still my busy little boy who loves to dance to music and do everything for himself.